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![handle is hein.beal/snrp0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 29th CONGRESS, [ SENATE. ] f 156]
2d Session.
INT SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
FEBRUARY 19, 1847.
Submitted, and ordered to be printed.
Mr. BAGBY made the following
REPORT:
The Committee on Indian Affairs, to whom were referred sundry petitions
and memorialsfrom citizens of New York, and others, praying that the
Tonrawanda band of the Seneca tribe of Indians may be exempted from
the operation of the treaty of the 20th May, 1842, report:
That the object of the petitioners is to permit the Tonawanda band of
Indians to remain oil the lands on which they now reside, notwithstanding
the provisions and stipulations of the treaty of the 20th of May, 1842.
The pre-emption right to the lai d referred to in the various petitions
and memorials referred to the committee was in the State of Massachusetts,
and Massachuseus assigned her interest to Thomas L. Ogden and Joseph
Fellows. To this treaty of the 20th May, 1S42, there appear, from the
face of the treaty, to have been four parties: the United States, acting
thr6ugh her commissioner; the Seneca nation or tribe, acting through their
chiefs and headmen ; the State of Massachusetts, acting through her com-
missioner; and Ogden and Fellows, assignees under the State of Massa-
chusetts. The object of this treaty seems to have been to settle finally all
the questions of difficulty among the several parties to it, and to carry out
and consummate the various contracts and treaty stipulations in regard to
the lands in question, and from which the memorialists pray that the Ton-
awandas may not. be removed. The treaty has been ratified and published ;
and the main question submitted to the committee, and now to the Senate,
is, whether it is competent for the government of the United States to annul
the provisions of a treaty upon the application of one of the parties to it,
or without the concurrence and approbation of'all the parties. The com-
mittee are clearly of opinion that it is not, and that the treaty can only be
dissolved by and with consent of all the parties to it. It is said that no
one of the chiefs of the Tonawanda band ever signed the treaty, and that
it was a fraud upon them; and that fraud vitiates the treaty, and renders
it void ab initio.
The committee have no means of knowing to what extent, or whether
at all, the Tonawandas were represented in the treaty of 1842. But, in
pubstance, the same evidence was before the Senate when the treaty was
ratified, that is now offered and relied upon to exempt the Tonawanda
band from its operation. With the substance of this evidence before them,
Ritchie & fleiss, print. REPRODUCTION BY PERMISSION OF
THE BUFFALO & ERIE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
BUFFALO, NEW YORK](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.beal/snrp0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)